Imaginary Coffee Date pt 1: Metzger/Noguchi

I wanted to start a series of posts where I exchanged emails with a friend on a topic we would usually bullshit about over coffee or beers.

Basically, I wanted to copy Bill Simmons:

Hope you like the first one.  And let me know if you want to have an imaginary coffee date posted on sidenote!

lauren and I, repping UNC blue

Lauren Metzger and I met at Kenyon College five years ago, we were breakfast buddies.  Lauren is currently an MSW student at UNC-Chapel Hill, and is a top notch triathlete.  In about a month, Lauren and one of my best friend’s Kaleb Keyserling are getting married!  She made time in her busy wedding planning schedule to have this email chain with me:

The topic: what we miss about Kenyon. 

Ken: There's a lot I miss about Kenyon - the convenience of living in Hanna and walking one minute to class, healthy all-you-can-eat meals at Pierce, but #1 is a sense of purpose.

I woke up every morning knowing I had to get up for 8:10 AM class, so I got out of bed and got to work.  Post-college it’s real vague.  I could be in lab at 7 AM.  I could also go in at 10 AM.  Odds are my boss won’t care, and I definitely won’t be seeing any report cards.

Lauren: Two things stood out to me - the first, food!  I miss walking into the dining hall and having so many options at my finger tips.  Not having to grocery shop and having local food was great- loved the turkey burgers! (I think those were local)

The second thing I miss are the people and structure. The xc team was such a source of stability, something I could always count on. I miss having teammates to run with. I could have enjoyed the people more if I had let myself. I was so worried about doing well academically and I think I was also a little socially anxious - worried about rejection.  

xc teams are apparently models of structure

Ken: I totally agree - there's so much pressure to do more and more.  I know I sacrificed several relationship for grades or to pile on more extracurriculars.  That said.. I don’t regret it.  As much as I love relationships - if I hadn't made those sacrifices I wouldn’t be in med school, and I can't imagine not being a doctor.  

Thoughts on work/play balance, post-Kenyon?

Lauren: Interesting - I was reading an article about women sacrificing top careers for family (which is a huge complex relationship).  The balance is very tricky. 

Post-Kenyon, the distance between friends only grows! You can't just text them and say "hey middle ground coffee?"  It becomes "hey can you buy a plane ticket to come see me for a weekend that may already be really busy and sorry I forgot you can't afford that plane ticket...."

lauren and kaleb

It was nice to have friends so close, but now everyone’s all over the country. It’s so much effort to keep in touch, and let’s face it - I like to be lazy and think my life is way busier than it actually is. 

Hmmm, career success....it depends on the field.  Medicine is hard, I was talking to kaleb about how he’s going to balance spending time with his family (a.k.a. me) while being a doctor. Don't think we’ve figured it out yet.

I know my balance will come with a flexible job, like academia, being a student all over again.  I HATE unpredictability. I felt like everything was so predictable at Kenyon. So structured in a way that I miss. 

Ken: Yeah, and we’re back to the structure.  It’s weird that our favorite thing about Kenyon was structure.. sometimes it felt like there was no structure and everything was a blur.  Or maybe that was just us going at blur speed within our structured schedules.  Either way, good times at Kenyon.

See you on the other side,

from ken